Apricot Protein Ice Cream

If you’re in the northern hemisphere, you probably don’t need me to tell you that apricots are beautiful this time of year. But I will anyways because who can’t do with a reminder, right?

Apricots are beautiful this time of year – they’re soft, they’re sweet, and mmmm, they smell like summer. Well, to me they do at least. They send me back to when I was a kid and used to run into the garden after dinner, pick as many fresh apricots as I could carry from our tree, and attempt to eat them all. I always ended up over-picking was the thing, the same way that I still do sometimes when I go to a buffet and load up my plate with a ridiculous amount of food which I never end up being able to finish. “Looks like your eyes were bigger than your stomach!” Oh well, there are worse physical asymmetries one can suffer from, right? Hehe.

Anyways, I bought some really ripe apricots yesterday morning, ate a few, and decided to make some protein ice cream with the rest. Note that I didn’t use an ice cream machine to make this. I actually never use one. Why not? Because I don’t have one. Why don’t I have one? Because they take up too much counter space! And I prefer to create recipes for you guys that don’t involve you having to go out and splash out on bulky kitchen equipment.

To make this recipe, all you need are four ingredients – a tub of Fage Greek Yogurt (2% fat), vanilla whey protein powder, coconut sugar, and fresh apricots.

Please read the notes at the bottom of this post to check out a few ingredient variations; I suggest you give these a go too, that way you’ll be able to enjoy a batch of protein ice cream made by you FOR you, one that uses not only apricots but also berries, bananas, apples… basically whatever fruit you have around. Ready for it? Here it goes:

2. Pour your mix into a shallow tupperware. I used a large square one. The reason you do this is to allow for the ice cream to freeze more evenly.

3. Stick your tupperware in the freezer for 40 minutes.

4. After 40 minutes, take your tupperware out of the freezer, churn it around with a fork (to break up any ice that may have formed) and stick it back into the freezer. This first churn is depicted on the second picture to the left here.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until your mix gets to a point where you can scoop it out with a spoon or ice cream scooper!

1. Feel free to use full-fat yogurt instead of 2%. Your ice cream will be a lot creamier and will have more ‘body’ if you do. You can also use a combination of Greek yogurt and (blended) cottage cheese – or even mascarpone for an intensely creamy protein ice cream.

2. If you want to use vanilla casein instead of whey protein powder, go for it. Just use a tiny bit less than 1/2 to account for the fact that casein is a lot more ‘liquid-absorbant’ than whey.

3. I used coconut sugar as my sweetener but remember that you can use pretty much ANY sweetener you like. Toffee of vanilla flavdrops would be AMAZING here and allow you to make a lower-carb ice cream that’ll tick all your boxes and make you want to siiiiiiiiiing!

4. If you don’t like or have apricots around, I suggest that you try this ice cream with another fruit. Bananas would be great, as would strawberries – or a combination of the two.

PS: Don’t forget to also make the Protein Ice-Creams included in the new Protein Pow cookbook as well as the one I wrote for bodybuilding.com which uses cottage cheese instead of yogurt. That one was delicious too. Check it out.